NDP Leader Ryan Meili met today with out-of-work tradespeople and joined them in calling on the provincial government to introduce a community benefits agreement that would ensure work for Saskatchewan tradespeople on Saskatchewan infrastructure projects.

“The government’s failed procurement model is holding Saskatchewan and its workers back,” said NDP Leader Ryan Meili. “When it comes to infrastructure projects, we need an approach that keeps Saskatchewan workers on the jobsite, not the SaskJobs website.”

The impacts of the Sask. Party’s recent budgets are still hurting families throughout the province in many ways. For instance, many are now struggling with the consequences of the Sask. Party cut to the Hearing Aid Plan – a service that provided audiological evaluation, hearing aids and fittings, counselling and education.

“After years of blowing through record revenues, the Sask. Party panicked when the money ran out and started cutting in areas that would hurt the most vulnerable,” said NDP Health Critic Vicki Mowat. “For over 40 years, this was a program that helped so many people and families throughout the province. It hasn’t taken long to see the damage that cutting it has done.”

NDP Leader Ryan Meili called today for a reversal of one of the several unpopular decisions in their 2017 budget that has not yet been reversed: the Sask. Party’s expansion of PST to construction labour.

“This is a government that saw the economy slowing down and they slammed on the brakes,” said Meili. “Adding PST to construction labour at such a time has hurt the industry and further weakened the broader economy. We’ve heard loud and clear from industry stakeholders how this decision would hurt them, and the numbers we see now are bearing that up.”

The Speech from the Throne was filled with “old news and old noise” instead of concrete plans to create jobs, restore funding to schools, or work towards better health outcomes for Saskatchewan people, according to NDP Leader Ryan Meili. Meili was also looking for some admission of the damage done by recent government choices, whether it’s the PST hikes or the ongoing mishandling of the GTH but saw none.

“We were disappointed that we didn’t see any commitment to addressing the underfunding of education, a focus on addressing the province’s worst-in-the-nation health outcomes, or the reversal of the harmful expansion of the PST to construction and restaurant meals,” Meili said. “This was the Premier’s chance to make his mark on the province by addressing the real issues that people are struggling with, but he chose not to.”

After months of outreach across Saskatchewan, a successful by-election, a critic shuffle that presented the province with an NDP government-in-waiting, and an energized and enthusiastic fall convention, Ryan Meili and the NDP are heading into the fall sitting of the Legislature calling for action to secure jobs for Saskatchewan people, improve our province’s health outcomes, and restore funding to our schools.